The Auditor at Dak Pek

by Frank Light

The wind relays a dialect, guttural, strange.
An irregular regiment debouches out his veins,
Disperses with the dawn.

In the afternoon twin engines drone,
A speck from above or below,
The lay of the land,
River with footbridge, ribbon of sand,
Hills, holes, the house, the huts,
The trees, vines, wires, ravines,
Crops, steps, stakes, paths, laughs,
Snake in the grass,
The highway unpassable, impossible,
Runway to the stars,
Out on the next plane.
All that remains.

As a draftee, Frank Light worked for Civilian Irregular Defense Group Finance, 5th Special Forces Group, in Vietnam 1967-1968. He’s now writing his way through retirement from the State Department. Adaptions from a draft memoir titled Adjust to Dust: On the Backroads of Southern Afghanistan have appeared in literary magazines.